In September 1951 literary icon-to-be William S. Burroughs proposed
livening up a dull evening with "our William Tell act," taking
presumed aim at the shot glass atop his equally sloshed wife's head. He missed.
From this incident grew the author's "exorcisive' drive to write (or so he
claimed) and a lasting Beat-culture mystery. It also provoked some less
starry-eyed observers' view that Burroughs was a wife-killer who got off
scot-free. One would be hard-pressed to find another true story so rich in
ambiguity, extreme behavior and celebrity gossip value, but "Beat"
manages to make the saga pedestrian and dull. A weak, flavorless screenplay and
less-than-compelling lead turns by Courtney Love and Kiefer Sutherland make this
the most inert hepster biopic since 1980's flatliner "Heart Beat." Pic
doesn't howl; it does, however, mutter "direct-to-cable."

The film begins in 1944 New York, where Columbia journalism student Joan
Vollmer (Courtney Love) is already living the semi-wild life, gulping down
pharmaceutical Benzedrine and entertaining a host of male miscreants, including
young Allen Ginsberg (Ron Livingston) and the older Burroughs (Kiefer
Sutherland), as well as hunky would-be sailors Jack Kerouac (Daniel Martinez)
and Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus). Nearly everyone seems smitten with Cart,
particularly Dave Kammerer (Kyle Secor). When latter's sexual desperation turns
assaultive during a park stroll, he ends up stabbed to death. Lucien dumps the
body in the Hudson; he gets a two-year prison stint.

Seven years later, Joan and William have married, despite his openly gay
proclivities, and have added a male offspring to Joan's daughter from prior
wedlock. This superficially normal domestic setup is forced to Mexico City by
narcotics charges. Ginsberg and Carr (now a UPI correspondent) visit the couple
there, only to find Burroughs has already left town with his current, reluctant
boyfriend-for-hire (Sam Trammell). Bored Joan is glad nonetheless to see the two
men, and ifs dear immediately that Luden carries a torch for her. The trio head
off on a road Wip, spending a couple of days in which the heterosexual pair's
will-they-or-won't-they tease is punctuated by weary statements like "If
you stare back into the abyss long enough it stares back at you."

A returned William endures his spouse's gay-sexcapade cracks even as he
suspects her of cheating with Carr. Waiting to sell a handgun for booze money,
they blandly pull the William Tell trick, with unfortunate results.

That this incident has no dramatic impact whatsoever can be blamed partly
on seripter-helmer Gary Walkow's ("The Trouble With Dick," "Notes
From Underground") rote, rhythmless direction. But greater fault lies with
a screenplay that renders these flamboyant, puzzling figures curiously dull,
their relationships unilluminated. We're told William and Joan love each other,
yet whatever complex understandings they arrived at in messy real life are
absent here, replaced by a banal mutual jealousy.

What's left are talky menages -- Ginsberg makes sad-puppy eyes at an
indifferent Carr while latter pines for Joan; later she and William mope over
their separate infidelities. Dialogue is by turns trivial and pretentious,
period flavor scant. There's little here to suggest that three of these
characters would soon become literary trailblazers. They don't even seem
especially Beat -- more like used-up cocktail party casualties.

None of the thesps can surmount the poorly written characters. Sutherland
isn't tall or cadaverous enough to evoke Burroughs physically; still, one
expects more interpretive depth from him than what emerges as just a so-so raspy
vocal imitation.

It's weird enough that Love is playing her third celebrity-spouse figure;
a weirder coincidence is that just before her famous husband's suicide, Kurt
Cobain collaborated with Burroughs on a recording project. Love and Cobain's
drug problems at the time, echoed here in the central relationship, have been
well chronicled. Too bad this bizarre instance of
art-imitating-life-mirroring-other-lives doesn't tap more performance life, let
alone artistry.

Like fellow bottle-blond pop figure Madonna, Love is comfortable before
the camera, but in character parts can't seem to communicate with it. Given her
meatiest opportunity so far, she tries hard, yet makes little impression. We're
supposed to see Joan as a sardonic, ballsy yet tragic figure, her possible
writhing talent neglected. But no interior life comes across. When Laden gushes,
"She's so fucking exciting!" you might wonder who he's talking about.
(It's worth noting that even Madonna has played this role better -- i.e., her
surprisingly vivid turn as a boozy thesp done in by a lover's Russian roulette
challenge in Abel Ferrara's little-seen "Dangerous Game.")

Stuck acting love-struck in a chemistry-free zone, third principal is
unmemorable but OK. Other performers sink with the material.

Modestly mounted feature has adequate production design by Rando Schmook
and some pretty Mexican landscape lensing by Ciro Cabello. But staging, pacing
and score are uninspired to tedious.

For the record, story was already dramatized before, albeit briefly, in
the quasi-biographical fantasy David Cronenberg spun from Burroughs' cult novel
"Naked Lunch," with Peter Weller and Judy Davis as the duo. Contrary
to epilogue titles here, which go on forever, Burroughs wasn't
"absolved" of murder, but rather fled to Mexico before his trial.